ADVANTAGES OF MANUAL TESTING OVER AUTOMATION TESTING

Software testing is a process of finding defects in any software application, with respect to the requirements of the client. The purpose of Software testing is to make the software defect free,? improve the quality of the software and to make the end user happy.

In this article, we are going to discuss various Advantages of Manual Testing over Automation Testing, so let’s start.

Despite the widespread use of automated testing, manual testing remains an essential component of testing in software development. Manual testing involves human observation to understand the UI, flow and behavior of any product , It has no dependency on environment limitations. It gives confidence to testers for a better approach in respect to exploring testing scenarios and no stress on dynamically changing UI designs.

Automation can only be done after the product is manually tested first, important defects are fixed and the application is stable enough. Automation testing is recommended for repetitive test execution. Automation testing requires specific programming skills, is time consuming and is expensive too. Thus, clients prefer to automate only high priority test scenarios, instead of automating the entire list of test cases.

Let us discuss some important aspects of manual testing which takes advantages over automation testing.

1. Manual testing is the base of automation testing, because it helps testers to better understand the flow of the product.
2. Manual testing is performed when the software/feature is new, buggy or unstable.
3. Manual testing helps in testing complex integration scenarios, which cannot be automated otherwise.?
4. Manual testing makes ad-hoc testing possible.
5. Manual testing provides a lot of width and depth coverage, by testing many more test scenarios in a short period of time, which otherwise could be very time consuming, if automated.
6. Best for small projects.
7. Training a manual tester is much easier than training an automation tester.
8. Best part of manual testing is that it helps to find visual defects, which cannot be automated or which cannot be detected via automation.
9. Usability testing is only possible by manual testing.
10. Automation testing requires an additional specific programming skillset, which is not required for Manual testing.
11. Manual testing is advantageous for applications which require frequent changes in existing features.
12. Manual testing is advantageous when one time testing effort is required, whereas Automation testing is advantageous for repetitive execution.
13. Automation testing cannot find issues for which validation is not included in the existing automated script.
14. Manual testing is used to test new end user workflow scenarios, which cannot be documented.

Conclusion: As per advantages of manual testing mentioned above, it can be stated that manual testing proves much easier, time saver and budget friendly in nature.